How does your cover stack up?

Indie authors often fall into this trap of thinking “unique” is good. But usually it’s not.

You want your cover to fit your genre and your market. You want your cover to look like the bestselling covers! This is one time where fitting in is much better.

If your book cover doesn’t mind a potential buyer of the other great books they’ve read, they won’t even read your description or reviews. It’s cutthroat. Fix your cover.

Is your pricing competitive?

Another trap indie authors fall into is overpricing their books.

I get it, you want to make some money back. But trying to do that quicker, by jacking up your pricing, will have the reverse effect – you just won’t sell books.

Again, follow the cool crowd, see how top authors at your level (that aren’t household names) are pricing your book and follow suit.

How old is your book?

I hate saying this as a woman, but age does matter, when it comes to books.

If your book is more than 3 years old and has never seen any sort of success, even on a small-scale to confirm you’ve got something the market wants, your best bet is to move on.

By move on I mean get that next book out!

Learn from your mistakes, consider hiring a marketing person this time around, or at minimum getting some marketing coaching.

I coach authors all the time who just need some insight on what they need to be doing better to self-promote.

Your next book will better, I can almost guarantee you, and it will naturally draw more interest to your previous title.

The Takeaway

Indie authors need to be self-reflective. You don’t get a free pass simply because you wrote the book.

If your cover looks like it could be in the top 20, if your pricing is right in that sweet spot, and your book is relatively new but you’re still not seeing sales – then you likely need to dig deep and figure out what efforts work for your market.

If your cover could use some work, your book is perhaps a bit too pricey, and you only do one or two things a week to promote your book – you have some work to do – but now you have a plan!

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